Mr. BYRNS. Would not the Director of the Veterans' Bureau have the authority under the appropriations given him to equalize his field force, if there is any such difference as has been mentioned here, in the way of some man getting a less amount of money than he ought to have?

Mr. BAILEY. It would seem so. He has a tremendous lump sum appropriation.

Mr. BYRNS. He can equalize it.

The CHAIRMAN. If he had the authority. The first thing he has to have is the authority to do it.

Mr. BUCHANAN. But the promotions would be made at the top, and they are already topheavy. As I understand it, many of the men who were promoted in the field are being paid what men doing the same service are getting in the District under the reclassification

act.

Mr. BAILEY. If you take in the whole District.

Mr. BUCHANAN. If they are paid that, it has to be made up from below in some way.

Mr. BAILEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Leaving out the Veterans' Bureau, the Internal Revenue Bureau, the Prohibition Unit, the Supervising Architect's office's custodial service, and the Customs Service, are all of the rest of the recommendations in regard to all the other governmental activities substantially as suggested by the departments?

Mr. BAILEY. Substantially as suggested by the departments.

BASIS OF ENTIRE ESTIMATE BY BUDGET BUREAU

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to have you illustrate that, and explain it to us.

Mr. BAILEY. Let me call attention first to the State Department positions covered in the Rogers bill. Those are in the lists transmitted to the Personnel Classification Board for about $185,000 for the bonus and about $420,000 in addition to the bonus. They are not included in this Budget Bureau estimate either for the bonus. or for an amount in addition to the bonus. Such an estimate will come to you later.

With respect to the estimates of the remaining departments, the Budget Bureau took off 2 or 3 per cent here and there from the department estimates for bonus and the amount in addition to the bonus where our best judgment indicated it could be taken off, on account of lapses in salaries. If the salary lapses the bonus and amounts in addition to the bonus will lapse.

Also, the lists were made out on the basis of the personnel of September 15, last. These estimates of the amounts in addition to the bonus were based on numbers of positions in effect on the 1st of July as determined by legislation up to the present date.

The September 15 lists also included a number of vacancies. Those lists represented, and hence the list estimate of $8,942,000 represented all the positions filled or unfilled, in effect on September

15.

The CHATRMAN. The places were estimated for, regardless of whether they were filled at that time or not?

Mr. BAILEY. Yes, sir; including positions for which appropriations are not provided for the next fiscal year.

So this estimate by the Budget Bureau of $5,591,346, in addition to its estimate of $20,723,481 for the bonus, is the Budget Bureau's best view, after a study of the matter, of what will be needed for the next fiscal year.

ESTIMATE FOR ADJUSTMENT OF SALARY BY DEPARTMENTS

Mr. BYRNS. You stated a while ago that the classification board had submitted a report to Congress to-day that carries the figure of $8,942,000. The Budget estimate is $5,591,000. You just explained how that difference has been brought about and the estimate made by the Budget. But I do not exactly understand the figures submitted by the classification board.

Does the classification board mean in that report to say or to report that the ultimate cost, under the reclassification act, for the field employees, will be $8,942,000; or just what does it mean?

Mr. BAILEY. The classification board is merely a transmitting agency of what the departments say it would cost if a compensation schedule such as the classification board submitted to the departments were enacted into law for the field service.

Mr. BRYNS. You made that schedule exactly in accordance with the schedule you made for the District, which was submitted to the departments, and the bill was enacted into law?

Mr. BAILEY. Practically so.

Mr. BYRNS. So that, after all, assuming the same action would be taken with reference to the field schedules as with reference to the District schedules, the reclassification will ultimately cost $8,942,000? Mr. BAILEY. That is reasonably approximate.

Mr. McREYNOLDS. Provided the departments were given the money they have estimated for, without any review by anybody else, that would be the initial cost.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Then if the Classification Board reviewed it, what would it cost?

Mr. BAILEY. The $8,942,000 estimate is the departments' estimate on the basis of that schedule without review. The board had no authority to review or cut the figure down.

REDUCTION IN ESTIMATES BY CLASSIFICATION BOARD ACTING AT REQUEST FROM BUDGET BUREAU

Mr. BYRNS. How much was it cut down?

Mr. BAILEY. The review that the board made for the Budget Bureau, at its request, resulted in cutting $900,000 from the customs service estimate of $2,003,000.

Mr. BYRNS. That is tentative. Take the Veterans' Bureau. You cut off there with the full knowledge that many of those employees are not going to receive any benefits under the classification act. That was a mere arbitrary cut, it seems to me.

I am talking now about the Budget. That was merely an arbitrary cut in the case of the Veterans' Bureau, but when you come to apply the act itself, and place every employee upon the same basis, then there will be employees in the Veterans' Bureau who will receive additional compensation, but who will not, under this tentative estimate that has been submitted here. So, after all, this

$5,591,000 does not represent the ultimate cost of the reclassification act for the field employees.

You talk about your review. How much did a review cut off the figures submitted by the departments relative to District employees? Here you have cut off in the ration of 5 to 8.

Mr. BAILEY. It would not be that much in the District of Columbia.

Mr. BYRNS. Is it fair to say it will be that much in the field? The CHAIRMAN. You said 7 per cent was original proposition for increases, and you cut that to 4.

Mr. BAILEY. You are talking about the Veterans' Bureau?

The CHAIRMAN. No; I am talking about the figure that the Budget recommended.

Mr. BAILEY. We have not any figures.

Mr. McREYNOLDS. With respect to positions in the District, and also those in the field service, in most Government departments there was complete agreement between the departments and the board's representatives.

There were a few places where we have not been able to do that, and such positions are included in the field lists on the basis of the decisions of the departments, while the board had the authority to fix the allocations of positions in the departmental service.

Mr. BUCHANAN. You did not let the departments go unhampered in the District as in the field?

Mr. BAILEY. No, sir.

LACK OF AUTHORITY IN CLASSIFICATION ACT FOR PERSONNEL CLASSIFICATION BOARD TO REVIEW ALLOCATIONS IN FIELD SERVICE

The CHAIRMAN. Section 4 of the reclassification act is as follows: That after consultation with the board and in accordance with a uniform procedure prescribed by it, the head of each department shall allocate all positions in his department in the District of Columbia to their appropriate grades in the compensation schedules and shall fix the rate of compensation of each employee thereunder, in accordance with the rules prescribed in section six herein. Such allocations shall be reviewed and may be revised by the board and shall become final upon their approval by said board. Whenever an existing position or a position hereafter created by law shall not fairly and reasonably be allocable to one of the grades of the several services described in the compensation schedules, the board shall adopt for such position the range of compensations prescribed for a grade, or a class thereof, comparable therewith as to qualifications and duties.

Section 5 of the act provides

That the compensation schedules shall apply only to civilian employees in the departments within the District of Columbia and shall not apply to employees in positions the duties of which are to perform or assist in apprentice, helper, or journeyman work in a recognized trade or craft, and skilled and semiskilled laborers, except such as are under the direction and control of the custodian of a public building or perform work which is subordinate, incidental, or preparatory to work of a professional, scientific, or technical character. The board shall make a survey of the field services and shall report to Congress at its first regular session following the passage of this act schedules of positions, grades, and salaries of such services, which shall follow the principles and rules of the compensation schedules herein contained in so far as these are applicable to the field services. This report shall include a list prepared by the head of each department, after consultation with the board and in accordance with a uniform procedure prescribed by it, allocating all field positions in his department to their approximate grades in said schedules and fixing the proposed rate of compensation of each employee thereunder in accordance with the rules prescribed in section 6 herein.

That is just a method of reaching a conclusion, but you have no power to review?

Mr. BAILEY. No.

The CHAIRMAN. In one case you can review and in the other case you have no power to review.

Mr. McREYNOLDS. We can merely furnish the schedule and then let the department make its own allocations.

The CHAIRMAN. On what schedules are these lists submitted to us for this increased compensation?

Mr. BAILEY. It was a mechanical schedule of grades and grade rates practically identical with the District of Columbia schedule. The CHAIRMAN. And not in accordance with the salary rates proposed by the heads of the departments?

Mr. McREYNOLDS. The department head is allocated to grades in the schedule but not always to the proper grades, in the opinion of the board's representatives.

The CHAIRMAN. The salary rates are not the same as have been applied to the lists by the heads of the departments, are they? Mr. McREYNOLDS. They use the same schedule.

The CHAIRMAN. They use the same lists, but you have not reported the same salary list which they applied to the pay list in asking for these appropriations?

Mr. McREYNOLDS. The Budget Bureau did not approve estimates based on those lists. Those lists as submitted by the departments to the board and included in the board's report to Congress amount to $8,942,000.

The Budget's estimate is an illustration of the difference between the department's original estimate and what the board would probably have approved if it had the authority to review the lists.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, the recommendation before us for an appropriation is not what the department submitted to the Congress?

Mr. BAILEY. That is right; it is not.

The CHAIRMAN. But the requests are based on what you say you would have recommended if you had authority to review; is that right?

EQUALITY OF PERCENTAGE OF INCREASE FOR EMPLOYEES IN DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND FIELD SERVICE

Mr. BAILEY. Take this view: 54,000 positions in the District of Columbia receive $3,680,000, for classification, in addition to bonus and base pay. The Budget Bureau estimates for 88,000 positions in the field, $5,591,000. The percentage, over base pay and bonus, is just the same, 4 per cent.

But Mr. Byrns is right in thinking that a review of the 88,000 field positions by the Personal Classification Board would undoubtedly result in a figure somewhere between $5,591,000 and $8,942,000. Mr. McReynolds has pointed out, however, that while the board's representatives were practically in agreement with respect to the positions represented by the $5,591,000, a review would nevertheless cut down this amount to some extent. Moreover, a review would also cut down the department's estimate of $8,942,000 in this respect: The board's circular asked the departments, where they found a position which, because of prevailing rates in the community or for other reason,

should not have the entire range of the grade, to indicate the part of the range that should apply. That operated in some cases so that the departments indicated the top rates as the proper range.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, if the salary was between the top and the bottom range, the department took the top!

Mr. BAILEY. Yes, sir. For example, take the grade $3,800 to $5.000. A man now receiving, say, $4,000 would be thrown in a range of $4,400 to $5,000, and this total of $8,942,000 would represent an increase in his salary of $400. But, on the basis of the classification in the District of Columbia, he would not get anything, because he would be at the $4,000 rate within the range of the grade, $3,800 to $5,000.

REASON FOR NOT ALLOWING LARGER INCREASE TO VETERANS' BUREAU, INTERNAL REVENUE BUREAU, AND PROHIBITION UNIT

So that while adoption of the Budget Bureau recommendation of no amount for the Veterans' Bureau, the Prohibition Unit and the larger part of the Internal Revenue Bureau would result in no increase during the next year for numbers of their employees, who under a classification system would get an increase, the offsets I have mentioned that would come under such a system providing review authority in the classifying agency would result in a figure for all the field services somewhat but not greatly in excess of the Budget Bureau estimate of $5,591,000.

Mr. BYRNS. It would hardly be offset by two or three millions; that is, the difference between $8,942,000 and $5,591,000. You would not expect to save half of the $5,000,000.

Mr. BAILEY. I think the Veterans' Bureau, on a $1,400,000 request, would lose at least half of it on a review.

The estimates are not defendable as definitely accurate estimates. Accuracy requires a classification act for the field service, and we did not have it.

Mr. BYRNS. I appreciate that, and I was not intending to even intimate any criticism in the way the estimates were submitted. Necessarily they are indefinite and undetermined, so far as finality is concerned. It is an effort to do what Congress can to put these field employees on the same basis with the District employees. Injustices will be done, undoubtedly.

Mr. BAILEY. The only other basis for the Veterans' Bureau, prohibition unit, and Internal Revenue Bureau that we could figure in the Budget Bureau, in lieu of a recommendation of no amount because of promotions anticipating classification, was to give the same percentage which they had for the District

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). I think that is the way it ought to be done, by a percentage. That is what we did for the legislative people.

Mr. BAILEY. While that would not be right for some bureaus, as, for example, a bureau having chiefly statutory positions in Washington and lump-sum positions in the field, I think it would be reasonably fair to the Veterans' Bureau. One and one-tenth per cent, their percentage for the District, instead of giving them $1,400,000, for which they asked, would give them about $325,000 for the field.

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